Revised advice on how to get of a rip current

Most well-informed adults who have spent any time near an ocean (or the shore of one of the Great Lakes) will have learned that if you are pulled away from shore by a rip current, you should swim parallel to the shore rather than struggle against the current trying to swim shoreward. That advice has now been significantly modified:

Dr. MacMahan, an oceanography professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., found that the conventional image of a rip current is inaccurate — that it’s actually not a long plume of fast-moving water running out to sea. Instead, rip currents more closely resemble whirlpools, with strong, persistent eddies that circulate throughout the surf zone, Dr. MacMahan reports in an article to be published in Marine Geology. If you swim parallel to the shore, he concludes, there’s a 50-percent chance you’ll end up be swimming into a stronger current. But if you just tread water, he says, there’s a 90 percent chance of being returned to shore within about three minutes...

I rather doubt the "90%" number is based on hard data, but the advice may well be valid.

Via The New Shelton wet/dry.